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81 Fed. Probation 41 (2017)
Fugitives from Justice: An Examination of Felony and Misdemeanor Probation Absconders in a Large Jurisdiction

handle is hein.journals/fedpro81 and id is 43 raw text is: June 2017 Kelli Stevens-Martin Tarrant County Community Supervision and Corrections Department Jialiang Liu University of North Texas Health Science Center PROBATION IS THE most widely used alternative to incarceration (Phelps, 2013); therefore, the majority of the responsibility of monitoring criminal offenders in the commu- nity falls on probation officials. One of many concerns for probation officers is offenders who abscond from supervision-that is, avoid contact with correctional supervisory agen- cies. According to the state oversight agency for community supervision in Texas, the term absconder(s) is defined as: persons who are known to have left the jurisdiction without authorization or who have not personally contacted their community supervision officer within three months or 90 days, and either: (a) have an active Motion to Revoke (MTR) or Motion to Adjudicate (MTA) filed and an unserved capias for his or her arrest; or (b) have been arrested on an MTR or MTA, but have failed to appear for the MTR or the MTA hearing and bond forfeiture warrant has been issued by the court. (TDCJ-CJAD Standards, 2015, p. 25) Absconders pose a potential threat to community safety because their behaviors, including drug and alcohol abuse, cannot be monitored by the courts. It is unknown what types of criminal activities they engage in unless otherwise apprehended for a new crime, and generally absconders are located by accident (Parent et al., 1994), through a random traffic stop where law enforcement officers discover there is an active warrant for the person's arrest. Findings from an earlier research project in the jurisdiction pertaining to felony techni- cal probation revocations were the impetus for this current study, and revealed that 51 percent of revoked felony technical offenders were absconders (Stevens-Martin, Oyewole, & Hipolito, 2014). After comparing a sample of 359 revoked felony technical offenders to a sample of 359 felons who completed supervision successfully, Stevens et al. found that outcomes revealed no significant asso- ciations between absconding supervision and race, gender, marital status, employment, income level, prior criminal record, prior supervision, prior revocations, or age at first arrest (Stevens-Martin et al., 2014, p. 19). Furthermore, it was hypothesized that those with substance use/abuse issues would be more likely to abscond than those without these issues for fear of going to jail; however, this was not the case. Those with substance use/abuse issues were 59 percent less likely to abscond than those with no substance/use issues, and those identified with mental health issues were 56 percent less likely to abscond than those without mental health issues (Stevens-Martin et al., 2014, p. 19). Last, the previous study in the jurisdiction found that employed felony offenders are 10 times more likely to complete supervision successfully, Further exploration of the absconder popula- tion in the jurisdiction was warranted. A dearth of literature exists pertaining to adult probation absconders and we could not find any research pertaining to adult misde- meanor probation absconders. There have been very few research studies on absconders since the late 1990s and early 2000s. These earlier studies focused on examining factors associated with felony absconders, including criminal history variables and predicting and locating probation (Taxman & Byrne, 1994) and parole absconders (Williams, McShane & Dolny, 2000), mainly felony offenders. Some studies posited that the increased punitive- ness of the criminal justice system at that time may have led to an increase in probation absconders (Byrne, Lurigio, & Baird, 1989; Byrne & Pattavina, 1993; Clear & Cole, 1990). Schwaner (1997) analyzed a group of parole absconders in Ohio and found that the coin- mon predictive variables for absconding were mainly criminal history factors such as prior adult and juvenile arrests and convictions and probation and parole supervision revocations. Following Schwaner's lead, Williams et al. (2000) examined the issue of predicting parole absconders in California. They wanted to determine if there were any significant dif- ferences in results based on geographic area of study and to create a prediction instrument 41

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